


A Different View

by littledust



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-01-15
Updated: 2006-01-15
Packaged: 2017-10-17 21:51:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/181535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littledust/pseuds/littledust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Years after Voldemort's fall, Luna and Remus work together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Different View

**Author's Note:**

> Had the most fun writing this and playing with the whole moon connection. Enjoy!

His memory comes like the moon, filling his head until it is heavy and then draining once more, mercifully, else traces of black hair and green eyes and laughter will swallow him whole and drag him under drifting currents. On days of full memory he sleeps in his office, buried under aged memos comforting in their mundanity; it is on one of those days that one bearing the words _Luna Lovegood_ and _assistant_ drifts past.

Remus sees her twelve years old and in his office, staring up with curious unblinking eyes as he explains to her that although the chart she made is very lovely it is not the assigned homework. It _is_ beautiful, one question scribbled at the top ("If there are Dark Arts, what other colors of magic are there?") and then rainbows upon rainbows of Potions and Transfigurations and spells he's certain do not exist. He gestures to the questions at the end of the reading, at the textbook, even at a quill and a bottle of ink as if it will make sudden, conventional comprehension blossom (wither) on her face.

He said that day that she could redo the homework and still receive full marks.

She asked if he saw what was there.

He gave up then, and told her how sorry he was to have to give her a zero for the assignment, told her all sorts of meaningless little teacher things that fell from his mouth like dry leaves. Her expression quivered with strange sadness and she left, waves of flyaway blonde hair trailing after her like tears.

He looks up now to see her older now, but still young of course, and still walking slightly outside of the world, a foot on the edge and a foot in the unknown. _Moon-touched,_ he thought seven years ago when he first saw her, and he knows when a person has bathed too long in the light of night, knows it with frightening intimacy. It echoes in the name the others called her (still call her), _Loony_ a fresh ghost beside the faded _Moony._ The air of Hogwarts rings with the sound still.

"You saw." He isn't surprised that they've picked up their conversation from before, like a book with an old bookmark still pressed between its pages.

And for the first time, he is able to say that he did, and he still does.

  
 _The next day_

  
His office is crowded and cluttered, a crammed bookshelf against one wall, equally full filing cabinets against another. The other two walls have a door and a window, respectively, and there are no personal items whatsoever in the office. Remus doesn't have any to put in there, really, so it isn't all that surprising. What Luna thinks of it he can't tell; no one ever knows what goes through her head. She just stands there looking about, vibrant and interested in everything as always. Well, perhaps not interested in everything--he remembers her as always curious about things no one else cared about.

Remus supposes that includes him, now.

"I'm not sure what sort of jobs I have for an assistant," he confesses, awkward and at a loss after the first round of greetings and good mornings.

"What is it that you do, exactly?" Luna inquires pleasantly, and Remus sighs, knowing she does not realize the sting her words carry. Of course _she_ would accept a job without really understanding it, or at least not on everyday terms.

His chuckle is bitter, like spoiled chocolate. "Do you know, I don't think anyone knows the answer to that question. Not even me." He shifts a pile of papers from one end of the desk to the other, then shuffles through another pile before tossing it all into the waste basket. "I think the Ministry just wants to keep me happy. They feel like they owe me something after the war."

"Are you happy?"

The innocent question (all the innocent questions she's been asking, really) unlocks some kind of door inside and he's telling her things he's never told anyone else (has no one to tell them to), telling them to the girl with the big eyes and the radish earrings even after all these years. "I've forgotten how to breathe here. I go from day to day doing nothing, doing the most meaningless tasks, taking whatever the Ministry gives me in some futile attempt to compensate for what they did to werewolves, even if one happens to be a war hero." Remus is verbose when angry, drawing on every bit of vocabulary he has picked up over the years. "This job is a placebo, something they all think I need to keep me from suicide, and I suppose someone well-meaning decided I was lonely and found you for some daily human interaction. Am I happy? I don't even know what happiness _looks_ like."

Pause.

Remus looks down at his desk, embarrassed by his sudden tirade, this outpouring of emotion on someone who never asked for it in the first place. "I apologize--"

Shift.

"I think you're entitled to know the shape of happiness," Luna says, sounding not quite so removed from reality as usual, tilting her head so her blonde hair slides off of one shoulder, tumbling down her back. The touch of whimsy that usually hangs about her face is gone, vanished into some sort of thoughtful seriousness not at all veiled by the half-closed eyes with their dark lashes.

The automatic question that rises to his lips is _Well, what is happiness shaped like?_ but that is just his academic side, the side that believes in looking things up in books and scribbling things out on long sheets of parchment. They are beyond the reach of papers and quills and encyclopedias; they stand poised and posed by their own hands on the brink of some sort of decision, some moonbright meandering into something other entirely. It's a long silence and it stretches on for a seeming eternity, Luna unruffled by this strangeness and Remus awash in it, allowing it to change him in some small, significant way.

Perhaps an alteration of perception.

He reaches out across the small distance (a very small distance after all) and cups her cheek, the tip of his index finger sketching out a brief pattern across smooth skin before tracing the outline of her lips, which are stretching to become a smile. He finds a dimple then, such a velvet little fold in a face like a puzzle, so many mysteries to solve and pieces to examine. Luna's eyes are open now, and bright, and Remus is drawn into them not like a flower to the sun but like the tides to the moon, the moon, always the moon.

The moon can be gentle, he is learning, as she leans up on tiptoe and kisses him, her taste as lingering and cool as her scent, the unabashed and fresh loveliness of dawntime in the spring, before the frost melts but still alive with growing things. She slips him some tongue and laughs low in her throat at his start of surprise, continues laughing for the sheer joy of it as he slides his arms around her waist and pulls her against him, such a kiss for such a girl and--

Her hands have flicked open his trousers and reached inside his pants before he quite knows what is going on; he breaks the kiss and gasps past her shoulder as soft hands close around his cock, tugging and teasing. Laughter again, and he knows she somehow knows that the women he's been with before have all been very much Step One (kissing) to Step Two (embracing) to Step Three (groping through clothes) and on and et cetera. He should have expected Luna Lovegood to break all the rules; he says as much to her, hisses it in her ear as he picks her up and seats her on his desk, scattering not-so important papers everywhere.

"I'm shaping your happiness," she replies, face so serene as her hands work so well.

Surprisingly, he remembers how to undress someone quickly: applying this knowledge with vigor, buttons and hooks fly apart under his fingers and then he has Luna's breasts in his hands, bends his head and feels a nipple stiffen under his tongue. " _Oh,_ " Luna says, "your hands are so-- and your--" She moans again, the sound trailing off into a breathy _Ahh_ , and has to let go of his cock to brace herself against the desk; in his peripheral vision he can see that the force of her grip has left her knuckles white. Happiness is best shaped by two for two, and he would tell her this but she already knows.

The taste of her skin is a warmer variant of that of her mouth, edged with the lingering scent of soap, so much _softness_ and all of it underneath him. Such sensuality is overwhelming, decadent. He licks and sucks until both nipples have become hard little pink peaks, and then Remus buries his face at the point where her neck meets shoulder, brushing aside the hair that gets caught in his mouth, pressing delicate little kisses there, barely grazing the skin. Another moment, and then he is trailing his hands back down her body, the pinch of one nipple a promise, the almost-tickling of her ribs a tease, the slide of his fingers into her knickers and over her clit the answer. Lifting his head, he watches her eyes shut and her breath come in pants, focuses on her lips and how reddened they are, how slick his fingers have become in such a short amount of time. He moves his thumb around and then over, gently back and forth, brushes a knuckle over her entrance without pushing inside, brings her trembling to the edge of release and then pulls away, hands hot against her thighs.

"Remus."

"Yes?"

" _Now._ "

He had been planning ahead in his mind, planning for gentleness and courtesy and some sort of bedroom decorum, but with one word she shatters again all the precepts he adhered to for so long. They are in his office and they want it _now_ as Luna just proclaimed and it is _time,_ time no longer running out but running back, back to him, so much time he had thought lost.

With a little sigh of impatience, Luna tugs her knickers down herself and wraps her legs around his hips, eyebrows arching suggestively and all the laughter back in her face; _you're thinking too much, Remus._ He thrusts into her, a simple act of gravity, feels her so tight and wet around him, hears her little cries of satisfaction as after the first erratic movements they settle into a rhythm of hips and heat. _Ohfuckyesplease_ becomes their mantra of uncontrol, its variants emerging as unprayers. Luna's open shirt pools across the desk like discarded flower petals, and his tie dangles between them, having worked its way out from underneath Remus' robes.

She takes the tie and then _tugs_ , until the world swims before his eyes and Luna remains the only thing he can see clearly at all, those blue eyes and the waves of hair and the expression somehow distant and intimate at the same time, her face as she comes, shuddering and bright and contained within and without herself. Her hands start to loosen but before oxygen can race back into his lungs he wraps his hands around hers, has her pull harder, and she does with sudden understanding and such affection suffusing her face. Lovely, lovely. _The shape of happiness,_ he thinks, and wants to say her name but the world is going dark at the edges, and she glows in his vision. He might be dying but he doesn't care, doesn't feel the pressure around his neck, only her softness underneath him, her warmth and her and _Luna,_ Luna, oh _God_.

He comes without a sound, slipping over the edge of consciousness, knowing only that Luna's smile curves so secret and so beautiful, like the (wo)man in the moon.


End file.
